


And eternal devotion (for ever and ever)

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Technomancers, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Technomantic Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 00:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: They break the Auroran technomancers out of the Shadowlair Source. Because it is the right thing to do.But not an easy thing.





	And eternal devotion (for ever and ever)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/gifts).



> Sequel to [With love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17511932).  
> Reading [Just one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612240) first is recommended.  
> For Modlisznik, because Sean deserves to not kill his kin and because They Should Be Brothers.

“Fuck, _fuck_ , he’s really doing it!”

Sean wants to phrase it even stronger, but he agrees with Amelia’s general assessment.

Visibility is down almost to zero — but in the front slit of the rover, he can just make out the dark bulk of the worm-hunting truck — itself like a worm — and the figure moving away from it, surrounded by sparks like a creature of nightmares.

Sean has been in a storm once, during his second deployment. The brass had miscalculated, as usual, and they were transported right into the edge of a storm and had to wait five hours in the train listening to screeches and scratches on the walls of the cars that seemed suddenly thin as paper.

The reality of the storm in full force is a hundred times more than that memory.

A headache is forming in the back of Sean’s skull, and he feels like he’s stuck between industrial-size electric coils.

And yet he watches those distant sparks and hopes that soon they will return to the truck, and the journey will continue.

The rover judders with the force of the storm.

They wait.

* * *

“I can procure cells,” the Prince said, rubbing his chin. “And I’m sure Pipi and Mistress Amelia can hook them both to the rovers and the truck. But I need to know how much energy they require, to calculate how many charged-up cells you will need.”

“Just bring enough cells,” Roy said. His face was closed-off. “Even empty ones. I’ll handle the rest.”

* * *

The pressure changes. The storm doesn’t become less violent. Closing his eyes, Sean tries to see the currents. His mind rejects it as superstition, just like the first time he attempted it — but, a flash— and he jerks and brings up his hand instinctively to shield his eyes.

But they are closed.

There is a giant vortex of currents converging in one spot in front of the truck, bright and vaguely human-shaped (in the way that clouds are sometimes human-shaped), the spindle turning, the needle of the power reaching far up into the sky.

“Sean?” Zachariah’s touch brings him back, and he tries to blink away the afterimage, looking at his beloved.

“Yes. He’s really doing it.”

* * *

“I can get us across the border,” Tenacity said. He sat away from Roy and didn’t look at him. They must have had another fight. “I know the places and I can always say you are my hunting party. Money’s not the issue. But how are we going to get into Shadowlair? The city’s practically on the lockdown last we’ve heard, and we can’t drive the rovers and the truck through the streets right to the Source, can we?”

“There are tunnels,” Roy said. He didn’t look at Tenacity. “They go right outside the dome boundaries and to the Source.”

“Yeah, and why don’t _they_ use the tunnels?”

Roy didn’t look. “Because the tunnels might collapse. Because they are infested with moles. Because Honor is keeping a watch on _them_ , and they are tired and scared. Because they’d rather die one by one than run.” His voice had risen, and he closed his eyes. Then said in a normal tone — which, for the past days, was a tone that conveyed nothing, “None of that will be a problem for me.”

* * *

The tunnels look nothing like the Ophirian Underworks. In Ophir, most tunnels are either in use or used to be in use — hollows in a corpse.

Under Shadowlair, they are a mix of claustrophobia-inducing narrow mole passages that open from time to time into caverns Sean can’t even sense the boundaries of; broad and very straight tunnels with smooth, perfectly even walls that look like black glass but give no reflection; industrial tunnels, maintenance tunnels…

Roy leads them relentlessly, not wavering even once in choosing the direction. The clang of the rings on his staff echoes.

Sometimes, it comes from _behind_ them.

Moles scuttle away.

Sean has a nagging feeling about this, coiled under his ribs. He was the one to persuade Roy, yes (and Roy’s trine), and he knows what they are doing is right, and they _can_ do it…

But he doesn’t like Roy.

Sean met Auroran technomancers before Roy, one the front lines and away from them, and, different as they are, he always felt a kinship with them. Sharing a smoke amid death and obscenity of war, he was aware keenly of the absurdity of the situation: to have to fight, to _kill_ those with whom he’d rather have a lengthy discussion, who would rather have a lengthy discussion with _him_ …

(He remembers a kiss — or rather, two — he’d got from two technomancers with smiling eyes, the girl’s lips bitter from cigarettes, the boy’s lips sweet. That double kiss carried him through the next three weeks of hell.)

Sean is aware that he is strange to non-technomancers, and that Roy is not typical, man or technomancer, by any means.

But never before Sean has seen someone to utterly _alien_.

He’s grown fond of Roy. He doubts they will ever understand the depths of each other (to do that, they have to be the same person) — but it is not necessary. He is less alone knowing that Roy exists, and that Roy is free.

There are many things he can’t get used to: that sometimes Roy can’t talk, that Roy can synchronize his body with someone else’s (Sean finds it intensely intrusive — to the one performing it as well as the one it is being performed on)…

But this… This figure walking at the head, blue and gold and with a mask that has no eye holes… It is not Roy. It isn’t _human_.

They have to blast through several blockages, and Amelia worries that their approach might be noticed.

“We are too deep underground,” the voice of the mask carries over. It doesn’t sound like Roy.

Surreptitiously, Amelia checks her tools, then turns a monitor to Sean. It shows _-1024 m_.

“But Shadowlair sits in a crater,” he says quietly.

Amelia mouths, “Adjusted for Shadowlair ground level.”

This shouldn’t be possible.

The tunnel doubles the sound of the rings.

* * *

The light at the end of the tunnel filters between giant fan blades. Roy steps between them, sweeps sand off a blade.

There is a crack in the floor tiles beyond it, as though something has been driven into it with force.

Sand and dust covers most surfaces and the only lighting is lumo stripes running low on the walls — and the blue on the ornate cage of the Conduit staff, pulsing blue evenly.

They meet the first guard several moments later.

They don’t even get to cry out as a red-black mass knocks them off their feet.

“Good boy,” Tenacity rumbles at Temperance.

The guard is pale and barely breathing under the bulk of a giant hound on their chest — but Roy passes them and their eyes roll back and breathing evens out.

Temperance steps off and trots to Innocence’s side.

Roy doesn’t even stop.

The next are three guards, and two are promptly shot in the thighs, Innocence and Tenacity working perfectly, and then blacked out — and the third one is slammed to the wall with golden claws closing over their throat.

“Where are they?”

The mask distorts the voice, and somehow, _impossibly_ , it sounds like it’s everywhere, like it’s in Sean’s _head_. By the frown on Melvin’s face, he can tell he’s not the only one experiencing it.

It doesn’t sound like Roy.

Sean has a moment of the need to tear off that mask and see who — _what_ — is there.

The guard grips the hand holding them — and yelps at the spark that crackles off the exposed wiring covering the arm. “Who—”

The beclawed fingers tighten, and the guard’s eyes bulge out.

Sean grips his staff. “Roy, that’s enough—” He reaches for the shoulder covered by blue cloth and golden pauldron — but the voice booms in his head, “ _Don’t_ touch me!”

He has to grip the staff with _both_ hands to not reach to that mask. “Roy, they are just following orders.”

The golden hand eases, and the guard, already passed out (but breathing, _breathing_ ), slides onto the floor — and Sean faces the mask. “Is that what you used to tell yourself, too, _Dog_?”

He wonders.

He wonders whether it would shatter if he punched it.

“Nobody,” he says very calmly, “dies today.”

“This is not for you to decide.” The mask pushes past him, and even though they don’t exactly touch, a spark passes between them. It stings.

“I will _not_ let you kill anyone, Roy.”

“Try.”

Tenacity growls something in a language Sean doesn’t understand (though he thinks he’s heard it during his deployments, used among the Aurorans).

Roy stops and barks back something that doesn’t even register as a _sound_ — and lumo stripes flicker, once, twice, and die.

The blue of the staff pulses out, and the lights come on again.

“Roy.”

Just his name. Innocence steps forward. He doesn’t look scared at all, even though…

Even though the mask can kill them.

Kill them all.

The mask doesn’t turn but a voice resembling Roy’s says, “Let’s move.”

The next guards manages to say that the technomancers are on the living quarters level before they are, too, drained and put into deep slumber.

Only slumber.

For now.

He leads them through the corridors with the surety he has shown in the tunnels, draining the odd guard here and there, and Sean wonders, with that sickening sensation in his stomach, why the mask has even brought them.

The headache and pressure grow.

They all — all of them — are the mask’s war chariot, the mask’s Merkaba, the white bull.

* * *

“What are you going to do when we get them out?” he asked.

Roy didn’t look at him. “Not your concern.”

* * *

As they walk, the sickening feeling is temporarily won over by another: anticipation vibrating in his muscles.

He’s going to meet his kin.

And he isn’t here to fight them, he’s here to fight _for_ them.

He’s going to meet his kind and he _doesn’t have to kill them_.

A set of doors slides open before the mask, and it looks like a common room behind them: a low table, a scattering of couches and armchairs and puffs, a green crawling plant on the wall, bookshelves…

And technomancers.

They all get to their feet, maybe two dozens of them overall, wearing the blue and gold that matches — but not  _quite_ — the outfit the mask is wearing. They are of different ages.

One of them, older than most, but not the eldest, with a head full of cropped short white, steps forward. “So, Serenity has found the one.”

“Yes, Honesty. They did.”

The technomancer’s eyes widen. “Temperance?”

“This is not my name anymore. Where’s everyone else?”

“Serenity—“

“I know where _they_ are, and how many they’ve had with them. Where’s everyone _else_?”

Another technomancer touches Honesty’s shoulder. “Sister…”

“Scattered.” She reaches her hands, palms down.

Roy doesn’t take them. “Has the Council destroyed the register at least? Or have you completely replaced the Council with Generosity’s Praetorians?”

Honesty winces, dropping her hands. “Generosity’s actions do not reflect the will of everyone else, you know that. We didn’t all say yes—“

“You didn’t say _no_!”

“Temperance—”

_“This is not my name!”_

Sean understands the words and their meaning only after the roaring storm passes.

One of the technomancers behind Honesty starts signing — so rapidly and fluidly that Sean can snatch only some individual signs, and even then barely. This is what their signing looks like. Can Roy—

“Good. At least you did _that_ ,” the mask says.

“What _is_ your name now?” Honesty asks.

“You don’t deserve it.”

She presses her lips together. She must be around Ian’s age, Sean thinks.

“You are leaving,” the mask throws, making to turn.

But Honesty plants herself firm. “This is our home.”

“It is not a home when you don’t feel safe anymore.”

She winces, looking after the mask. “What of the Source? Our quarters? We cannot allow anyone — _him_ — here.”

“I’m sealing these levels.”

“How?”

“Not your business.” The mask glances over their shoulder. “Bring all the guards to the first level. Or don’t, if you don’t care about their lives. They will perish if you don’t.”

Andrew touches Sean’s arm, and Sean nods to him. Andrew and Zachariah depart with the team, taking Temperance, too, leaving only Sean, Tenacity and Innocence. Honesty signs to her kindred, and they, too, go.

“What about personally caring for every life, Sean?” the mask sneers. “Don’t those guards count?”

This is not Roy, not his brother, _cannot be_. Not the one who spoke about the whole world being alive and important.

He grips his staff so tightly the gloves must be ruined. “Don’t blaspheme.”

“Don’t teach me about blasphemy.”

The mask takes off, the blue robe flapping, and they can do nothing but follow.

Sean needs to know. He needs to see it to the end and to know whether he’d have to take this one life to save someone he loves.

Honesty, swift and in blue and gold so similar and different to the mask’s, flies with them.

They rush through winding passages, half-lit halls and rooms and corridors, and Sean loses all sense of direction, but not the sense of wonder, even clawed at by concern and hurt. This is their home. So vast and _theirs_. Somewhere, music chimes, bright and joyful, and Sean isn’t sure he hasn’t imagined it.

Their race ends by a… a greenhouse, he assumes, like something out of a dream — right inside a vast dark chamber, glimmering like a gem.

As they draw close, he notices a dark mirror in the middle of the garden enclosed inside, and realizes it must be water. Three mighty trees arranged over it, one of them in gentle bloom, like a white-pink cloud.

They have this, here, in the Source, in their home — they have this place — and they have to leave because their home has been violated.

He doesn’t kill anymore — but he would gladly leave General Honor a few burns.

“What do you need from the lovers?” Honesty asks as the mask stops at the threshold of the garden.

The air is permeated with aching sweetness.

Lovers? Can it be the name of the trees?

“Not your concern. _I_ am not your concern anymore, Honesty. I’ve brought you a better son,” Roy says, and before Sean can object (it is not true, it is _not_ ), Roy signs to him one-handed and steps inside the garden.

_“Protect them.”_

“Roy!” He lunges after — but runs into an electric field so tight it’s physically impossible to penetrate; it shimmers and hums, spreading over the garden.

The hum rises in intensity but not the pitch, and sparks rush through the air like thin threads of unraveling fabric.

Sean can’t look away. Can’t go away.

Flowerbeds bloom when Roy moves past them, and then the great trees, too, flower rapidly, white and purple and pink. Like in those sped-up vids.

And the mask — Roy — steps onto the water.

He doesn’t wade through it — he walks _on_ it, the blue on the staff glowing bright and throwing strange hues over the trees. Then Roy lowers himself on the mirror of the pond, crossing his legs, and puts the staff across his lap, shadows obliterated by so much light, and he brings his hands up to the chest level, forming them into complicated gestures that Sean doesn’t know the meaning of.

The water — it _is_ water — explodes in a fountain, brilliant, sparks impossibly bright — and yet Roy doesn’t fall. He stays seated in the thin air, as though that is not impossible.

(Some kind of magnetic field manipulated from—)

The din-roar is loud, but inaudible at the same time, like a rush of deafening silence coming in waves, shaking Sean’s very bones. He looks at Tenacity and Innocence, all shadows gone from their faces. A field is shimmering over them, protecting from the high charge.

He startles from a touch and looks at Honesty. She’s saying something, but all sounds are swallowed by the power. So she signs, fast, then again, slower, slow enough that he catches the meaning. The meaning he’s realized already.

_“Turning himself into eternal generator._

_“Won’t come back.”_

He looks at Roy, tries to call again. Roy is already only an outline in bright power, featureless and yet recognizable, and Sean’s heart sinks because he can’t save this one person; Sean’s life, his struggles will be undone by this one failure.

A movement brings his attention to Innocence again. The boy puts down his rifle while Tenacity shoulders his. Innocence looks at Sean, and, unlike Sean, the boy is calm. Calm like the three trees blooming despite death-to-be happening in the middle.

Sean brings up another shield over them both, adding it to Honesty’s, even though it drains his own with how powerful the surge is (from the storm, the tunnels, the guards — all that power collected, so much…). His hands are burning in his gloves.

They step between the flowerbeds, Tenacity with his hand raised against the bright glow, and Innocence calm, calm, calm. They jump onto the bed of the pond, he can barely see them, they are shadows nearly swallowed by the brightness to rival the Sun.

Both shadows fold themselves over the core of the brightness, and in the deafening silence Innocence’s voice sounds clear and close.

“Let’s go home, Roy.”

* * *

Zachariah and Andrew are already discussing something with one of the Aurorans, but other than them, nobody talks.

Nobody looks back.

The technomantic levels are sealed so thoroughly it would take a group of very powerful technomancers to wade through the incessant currents, the air filled so thickly it vibrates and hums and stings through any protection. They’d have to go to the Lovers’ Garden and… persuade the trees to stop generating all this electricity (blooming forever and ever).

It has certainly short-circuited all tech in the quarters — but the Aurorans carry their knowledge with them, and they have backups elsewhere that they can retrieve later.

It would take a whole group — or one Conduit.

Roy doesn’t speak. He is at the front again — Innocence and Tenacity are framing him, their hands holding his, fingers entwined. The staff, lighting the passage, is in Innocence’s hands. The mask is carried by Tenacity.

Sean excuses his way forward, and reaches out, then thinks better of it — and folds his hands in a sign that Roy cannot see. He makes sure to add the appropriate surge to it, so that… He hopes that Roy can feel that.

_“I love you, Brother.”_

Roy doesn’t stop, and a cold weight Sean knows all too well settles in his chest. Guilt, and the pain of loss.

But then, a charge startles him.

He’s not fluid in electro-signing (yet), but he recognizes it for what it is.

Acknowledgment.

The cold melts away.

He waits until Zachariah and Andrew and their companion reach him, and he slots himself between his boys and takes their hands, warm and familiar, and holds tight. The gloves need repairs anyway, and his skin needs treatment for burns. It doesn’t matter now.

They are home.

**Author's Note:**

> The Lovers appear in [Lovers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17590250).  
> Honesty (and a little insight into Roy's past) can be read about in [Unfashioned Creatures](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14395920).


End file.
